The present invention generally relates to patient registration. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and systems for providing patient registration information.
Healthcare environments, such as hospitals or clinics, include information systems, such as hospital information systems (HIS), radiology information systems (RIS), clinical information systems (CIS), and cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), and storage systems, such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), library information systems (LIS), and electronic medical records (EMR). Information stored may include patient medical histories, imaging data, test results, diagnosis information, management information, and/or scheduling information, for example. The information may be centrally stored or divided at a plurality of locations. Healthcare practitioners may desire to access patient information or other information at various points in a healthcare workflow. For example, during surgery, medical personnel may access patient information, such as images of a patient's anatomy, that are stored in a medical information system. Alternatively, medical personnel may enter new information, such as history, diagnostic, or treatment information, into a medical information system during an ongoing medical procedure. Additionally, patients may access information systems for scheduling, diagnosis and/or treatment information, check-in or admission, and/or other tasks. One or more of these systems comprise a healthcare information system, for example.
In typical healthcare settings, the patient registration process is a lengthy and repetitive procedure that patients must endure at nearly every encounter with a healthcare professional. Each new doctor, office, department, or even visit often requires a new set of forms to be completed. Moreover, paper-based forms are still widely-used to document a patient's demographic information, medical history, current medications, allergies, and other information. These paper-based forms are often added to the patient's folder associated with the particular doctor, department, or office being visited. In many settings, the information provided by the patient is transcribed into an electronic healthcare information system. Of course, the transcription process is prone to error in data entry and necessarily results in the patient losing control of his or her data.
In more advanced healthcare enterprises, patients have the ability to input their relevant information directly into an electronic system, thus bypassing the transcription process. For example, kiosk systems enable patients to enter their information at a kiosk that aggregates and transmits the information to the healthcare information system. However, these systems are typically disparate, thus requiring patients to redundantly enter the same information at every new facility or information system they encounter. Moreover, kiosk systems are tied to a physical location, and the ease of access to a kiosk depends on the number of patients waiting to use the kiosk. These systems can also be quite expensive, so smaller healthcare facilities are unlikely to have a multitude of kiosks available for patient use. Additionally, a patient may realize during the registration process that he or she is missing some piece of information required by the system. In such a scenario, the patient may be forced to abandon his or her current registration and vacate the line in order to obtain the necessary information. Furthermore, these systems still may result in a lengthy registration process that cannot be completed, or even begun, until the patient has arrived at the site of the kiosk.
Thus, there is a need for methods and systems that provide one-time input of patient registration information, patient-controlled dissemination of patient data, and secure transferring of patient information that is not tied to a physical location or time. There is a need for methods and systems that provide the remote handshake transfer of patient information during the patient registration process.